Cocaine use is the fastest growing drug problem in America. Most alarming is the recent availability of cocaine in a cheap but potent form called crack or rock. Crack is a purified form of cocaine that is smoked.
- Crack is inexpensive to try. Crack is available for as little as $10. As a result, the drug is affordable to many new users, including high school and even elementary school students.
- Crack is easy to use. It is sold in pieces resembling small white gravel or soap chips and is sometimes pressed into small pellets. Crack can be smoked in a pipe or put into a cigarette. Because the visible effects disappear within minutes after smoking, it can be used at almost any time during the day.
- Crack is extremely addictive. Crack is far more addictive than heroin or barbiturates. Because crack is smoked, it is quickly absorbed into the blood stream. It produces a feeling of extreme euphoria, peaking within seconds. The desire to repeat this sensation can cause addiction within a few days.
- Crack leads to crime and severe psychological disorders. Many youths, once addicted, have turned to stealing, prostitution, and drug dealing in order to support their habit. Continued use can produce violent behavior and psychotic states similar to schizophrenia.
- Crack is deadly. Cocaine in any form can cause cardiac arrest and death by interrupting the brain's control over the heart and respiratory system.
The drugs students are taking today are more potent, more dangerous, and more addictive than ever.
Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the effects of drugs. Drugs threaten normal development in a number of ways:
- Drugs can interfere with memory, sensation, and perception. They distort experiences and cause a loss of self-control that can lead users to harm themselves and others.
- Drugs interfere with the brain's ability to take in, sort, and synthesize information. As a result, sensory information runs together, providing new sensations while blocking normal ability to understand the information received.
- Drugs can have an insidious effect on perception; for example, cocaine and amphetamines often give users a false sense of functioning at their best while on the drug.
Drug suppliers have responded to the increasing demand for drugs by developing new strains, producing reprocessed, purified drugs, and using underground laboratories to create more powerful forms of illegal drugs. Consequently, users are exposed to heightened or unknown levels of risk.
- The marijuana produced today is from five to 20 times stronger than that available as recently as 10 years ago. Regular use by adolescents has been associated with an "a motivational syndrome," characterized by apathy and loss of goals. Research has shown that severe psychological damage, including paranoia and psychosis, can occur when marijuana contains 2 percent THC, its major psychoactive ingredient. Since the early 1980s, most marijuana has contained from 4 to 6 percent THC—two to three times the amount capable of causing serious damage.
- Crack, now becoming widely available, is a purified and highly addictive form of cocaine.
- Phencyclidine (PCP), first developed as an animal tranquilizer, has unpredictable and often violent effects. Often children do not even know that they are using this drug when PCP-laced parsley in cigarette form is passed off as marijuana, or when PCP in crystal form is sold as lysergic acid (LSD).
- Some of the new "designer" drugs, slight chemical variations of existing illegal drugs, have been known to cause permanent brain damage with a single dose.
Drugs erode the self-discipline and motivation necessary for learning. Pervasive drug use among students creates a climate in the schools that is destructive to learning. Research shows that drug use can cause a decline in academic performance. This has been found to be true for students who excelled in school prior to drug use as well as for those with academic or behavioral problems prior to use. According to one study, students using marijuana were twice as likely to average D's and F's as other students. The decline in grades often reverses when drug use is stopped.